Mona’s Eyes

Art historian Schlesser’s vibrant English-language debut frames a survey of classical Western art with the story of a Parisian man supporting his 10-year-old granddaughter after her sudden bout of temporary blindness. Mona’s doctor, unable to explain the cause or predict whether it will recur, refers her to a psychiatrist. Instead, her grandfather surreptitiously takes her to one of the city’s museums each week for a year, under the ruse that he’s delivering her to the psych appointments and out of the hope that should Mona’s blindness return permanently, the artwork she sees will enrich her visual memory. Each week, they look closely at a single work, including such legendary paintings as the Mona Lisa, which Mona considers sad because of its dark and empty background, and less-famous pieces like Rosa Bonheur’s Plowing in the Nivernais, which Schlesser evocatively describes (“The work, of panoramic scope, depicted furrows cut by plowshares across its entire width. The sky, with its blended shades of blue fading perfectly to convey the subtle light of a chill morning, took up half of the canvas”). Schlesser seamlessly interweaves the art lessons with Mona’s story, which concludes with an explanation for the cause of her blindness. Readers of Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World will love this. (Aug.)